In the past couple of days, I experienced some significant moments that I thought I would share. (This blog is not focusing on the fact that I finally finished my taxes this week and that Maki passed his driver’s permit test…also big milestones on my map. And I also survived IKEA.)

The first was more of a thought-event, triggered during my drive up to IKEA with two young girls in tow. While listening to the surreal oeuvre of Weird Al Yankovich at the girls’ request, I realized that our destination was just down the street (same freeway exit) as Vernon’s Dialysis Center. Of course I knew this exit was coming, I’ve driven past it many times since he died. But for some reason, a little more weighted version of this realization me all of a sudden. Maybe I can blame it on Weird Al, but it suddenly seemed so long a drive, and I wondered: How did I do this so often over those years? At the time I guess I’d thought: This was as close as we could get him, so it beats other alternatives.

But I had hated that drive and how often we had to go, and when the dialysis visits extended to five times a week, I had to enlist the help of others to sit with him (which among other duties, meant potentially changing his diapers or picking him up of the floor, let alone receiving his surreal sweetness mixed with the verbal abuse, which usually kicked in about 20 minutes into the session, depending on his arbitrary moods and medication.) If I’m honest, dialysis and all it brought with it was the worst part of Vernon’s complex situation, and it just kept getting harder and more frequent.

Those are the thoughts that washed over my mind on my drive to IKEA yesterday. Why then? Why not earlier? Probably because it was too close to honest about. But then, I think I was as honest as I could be at the time: that was my 43-44-year old self processing, and I was still in the middle of the action. Now I’m a little older and removed from the situation. Neither of them are wrong, but it’s still a surprise when the washing-over of new-realization comes.

The second thing was that I finally deposited the check that our lawyer sent us two months ago. Its been sitting in the butter-knife-slit Fed-Ex envelope on my desk for two months. What was I supposed to do with a $10,000 check that summed up his life? The people who hit him had the minimum of insurance available in the state. The truth is, because of our lack of riches, we were able to offset many of the hospital bills, so I feel like I should be thankful to get a check at all. But it isn’t money I want to spend.

And the third thing happened this morning, when I finally put Vernon’s bikes in the van. His bicycles were a very important part of his life, so I haven’t wanted to just donate them, and I haven’t known how to determine their value. I know he was as high-end about his bike purchases as he could afford to be, always ordering bits and pieces to tinker with when he came home at night. They were his favorite mode of transportation since he was a boy. I think in my heart, I thought it would likely be hit on a bike as much as he was on the road. Today, the bike consignment place took one of out of the three we offered, because it wasn’t entirely fixied-up. We only arrived at this place of finally letting go of them because we are using the garage more: Maki is painting large pieces in there, and I need the extra storage.

Life keeps pushing us into new comfort zones. And now, we are here.